Western Desert Safari

Bahariya Oasis, Dakhla Oasis, Kharga Oasis, Siwa Oasis, Farafra Oasis

Discover the pure nature in the Egyptian Western Desert

Egypt’s Western Desert is hard to describe in one go. It is huge. It is one of the most arid regions on earth, in fact, one of our last frontiers. German, English, and Italian tourists have been basking in its hot springs and exploring its ancient artifacts for centuries. It was primarily their explorers who opened it up to the world in the 19th century. Americans seem to think they had no part in its development, but a rag tag group of Marines and sailors crossed the Western Desert from Alexandria to Derna (in Libya) in 1805 in one of the most amazing military expeditions in history. We don’t talk about it much (which is too bad), but Derna was the first Marine battle on foreign soil and the sword worn by marines at full dress today commemorates "the shores of Tripoli."

History alone may not lure a traveler to the Western Desert, but will! This is adventure offered up in degrees so there is something for everyone: mild for those who insist on a good shower and a swimming pool at the end of the day; strong for those who like to go into the wilderness to camp, but know that the paved road and the high tension lines are nearby; or intense, where one tempts the fates and carries all the water, gasoline, and food necessary for a 10-to-24-day step-off-the-edge-of-the-earth escapade. Any one of these journeys is worth putting on your wish list.

Mild: Loop the Loop to the Oases

For the traveler who likes a little bit of adventure, but wants it peppered with modern conveniences, a trip around the loop road will bring four major oases into focus. The loop swings out of the Nile Valley near Cairo and returns to the river near Luxor. It is a 700 mile journey that leads to four distinctly different worlds filled with fascinating desert people, antiquities, mysteries, and newly built resorts. The first oasis on the loop road, Baharia Oasis, is 194 miles from Cairo.

Recently a great ‘discovery’ was made here. Hundreds and hundreds of ancient mummies were uncovered, most adorned with precious gold jewelry and amulets. Dubbed the Valley of the Golden Mummies, the area is now under intensive excavation and a tomb was actually opened for the first time on the Discovery channel a few months ago. But Baharia is more that golden mummies, which the world will soon see are a-dime-a-dozen in almost every oasis in this desert (after all it, like the Nile Valley, the desert has had thousands of years of history). Baharia’s greatest treasure is its physical environment. The sand is golden! A string of small hills runs in an almost perfect line from north to south, most topped by black basalt stone. Both the hills and the basalt are gifts of an ancient geological upheaval. Amid the hills is the Black Desert where the golden sand is littered with tiny black stones. Hard on your tires, but spectacular to your eyes, there are dozens and dozens of places to camp.

In contrast to Baharia, Farafra Oasis, another hundred miles along the route, has a White Desert. Giant white chalk monoliths rise from a pure white desert floor, while smaller outcroppings looking like donkeys, camels, and Bedouin, enchant the visitor with their humor. Here one can roam off-road without too much fear of getting lost. One can pitch camp under Snoopy the dog or a napping Mexican with a huge sombrero. Couple these wonders with the pure air of the desert, the almost lack of sound (except for the wind), and how can one not think that this is paradise! Farafra holds the most mysteries in the desert. It was in Farafra that Cambyses, the Persian conqueror of ancient Egypt, lost an army. 50,000 strong they set off from ancient Thebes (modern Luxor) to attack the Oracle at Siwa Oasis. They never got there. Herodotus said a sandstorm vanquished this army. Historians have been looking for it ever since. Modern technology still cannot find it.

Dakhla Oasis was a breadbasket of the Roman Empire. It is lush with farmland growing vegetables and fruits in the iron-rich red earth. Here medieval mudbrick Islamic villages are perched on hills with impenetrable, sheer-sided outer protective walls. The hot springs, where hot water gushes up from deep in the earth and spills into an awaiting trough, allows the traveler to lay back and float in a mist of steam while looking up into a canopy of stars. All the oases have these intoxicating hot springs. They are more controlled in Dakhla. So are the Bedouin camps, where the young boys will beat their drums and sing around a small fire in the evening. Dakhla is where one shoots off to the deep desert. In the ancient past it was often invaded by desert tribes who carried off its camels and women. So the people of Dakhla went into the desert and destroyed the water wells for a journey of five days. That stopped the invasions.

Kharga Oasis is the last oasis on the loop before the Nile Valley. It seems to have had the longest association with ancient Egypt. It is also the place where Christians were banished in the 4th and 5th centuries and as a souvenir of the time boasts one of the largest ancient Christian cemeteries in the world: Bagawat. Kharga also claims the first five star resort with swimming pool and air conditioning. At first glance Kharga looks disappointing for its main village is a replica of a Nile Valley town, but one must dig deeper.

Kharga Oasis’s greatest treasures, in addition to its marching rows of crescent sand dunes, are the Roman fortresses scattered along a famous slaver’s road called the Darb el Arbain, the 40 Days’ Road. Roman scholars marvel at the rubble of fortresses in Jordan and Iraq that stand only a few meters high. Here in Egypt’s Western Desert, the unexplored fortresses rise to four and five stories. And there are dozens of them. To visit the fortresses and their surrounding cemeteries is a 4x4 adventure. This is why all terrain vehicles were invented. With a local guide in tow, one leaves the asphalt and heads into the desert dodging huge multi-sided sand dunes called whale dunes. The silence, while standing in front of an ancient fort, hurts the ears. The imagination is boggled while trying to grasp the possibility that once 20,000 people lived in this remote spot, or that hundreds and hundreds of caravans pushing tens of thousands of slaves stopped for water and rest.

Siwa Oasis is not on the loop, which makes it difficult to visit when trying to tour as many of Egypt’s tempting oases as possible. Yet Siwa is the most intoxicating; its people the most independent and unique. All of its ancient villages are perched on huge desert rocks which rise above seas of swaying palm trees. Siwa is known for its dates and its olives. If you want extra virgin olive oil, Siwa is the place. The press is done by hand with a donkey walking round and round grinding the olives between two massive stones.

Siwa is the seat of the ancient Oracle of Amun for whom Alexander the Great made his desert trek. It is also the place where desert jewelry, baskets, dresses, and traditions remain strong. A Siwa basket is a treasure to die for. A Siwan woman’s dress has been the hit of cocktail parties in fashionable New York drawing rooms for decades.

To "do" the loop road a traveler needs 8-10 days, a good car, a map, and a sense of adventure. To add Siwa you need 4-5 days more. The on road travel can easily be done without a guide, it is a single road going to a specific place. Once in the different oases one may sign up for day tours into the desert. If doing it alone is a bit too adventuresome, there are tour companies in Egypt and on the Internet who offer desert travel at good prices.

Geographic's of the Oasis:

On the west side of the Nile River the Oasis takes place at the heart of the desert, in a very pure atmosphere, under a very clear sky and in a very dry weather the nature covers everything

The Western Desert covers about 700,000 square kilometers (equivalent in size to Texas) and accounts for about two-thirds of Egypt's land area. This immense desert to the west of the Nile spans the area from the Mediterranean Sea south to the Sudanese border. The desert's Jilf al Kabir Plateau has an altitude of about 1,000 meters, an exception to the uninterrupted territory of basement rocks covered by layers of horizontally bedded sediments forming a massive plain or low plateau. The Great Sand Sea lies within the desert's plain and extends from the Siwa Oasis to Jilf al Kabir. Escarpments (ridges) and deep depressions (basins) exist in several parts of the Western Desert, and no rivers or streams drain into or out of the area.

The government has considered the Western Desert a frontier region and has divided it into two governorates at about the twenty-eighth parallel: Matruh to the north and New Valley (Al Wadi al Jadid) to the south. There are seven important depressions in the Western Desert, and all are considered oases except the largest, Qattara, the water of which is salty. The Qattara Depression is approximately 15,000 square kilometers (about the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island) and is largely below sea level (its lowest point is 133 meters below sea level). Badlands, salt marshes, and salt lakes cover the sparsely inhabited Qattara Depression.

Limited agricultural production, the presence of some natural resources, and permanent settlements are found in the other six depressions, all of which have fresh water provided by the Nile or by local groundwater. The Siwah Oasis, close to the Libyan border and west of Qattara, is isolated from the rest of Egypt but has sustained life since ancient times. The Siwa's cliff-hung Temple of Amun was renowned for its oracles for more than 1,000 years. Herodotus and Alexander the Great were among the many illustrious people who visited the temple in the pre-Christian era.

The other major oases form a topographic chain of basins extending from the Faiyum Oasis (sometimes called the Fayyum Depression) which lies sixty kilometers southwest of Cairo, south to the Bahariya, Farafirah, and Dakhilah oases before reaching the country's largest oasis, Kharijah. A brackish lake, Birket Qarun, at the northern reaches of Al Fayyum Oasis, drained into the Nile in ancient times. For centuries sweet water artesian wells in the Fayyum Oasis have permitted extensive cultivation in an irrigated area that extends over 1,800 square kilometers (694 square miles).

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